


Get Up or Get Down

by provocative_envy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 19:58:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2201133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocative_envy/pseuds/provocative_envy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Tamsin Riddle had never understood Leontes Granger.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>She recalled the day they had first met, as eleven year-olds on the Hogwarts Express, with equal parts frustration and fascination—Granger had already been in uniform, all neatly pressed black trousers, polished brown loafers, and a crisp white linen shirt buttoned up to his collar; his hair had been in dire need of a good trim, thick, sandy brown strands curling messily around the back of his neck, and his face had been slightly pudgy, cheeks rosy and chin round, overlarge front teeth on display as he’d expounded, at length, upon the myriad mundane details of Hogwarts’ medieval architecture.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He’d grown up since then, obviously—Tamsin hardly needed that absolute <b>slag</b> Cora McLaggen to point it out to her—but he had made his opinion of Tamsin perfectly clear in that narrow, dimly-lit train corridor all those years ago.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He did not like her.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get Up or Get Down

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a prompt, sent via [Tumblr](http://www.provocative-envy.tumblr.com) by someone with enough self-preservation instincts to remain anonymous:
> 
>  
> 
> _“GENDERSWAP HEAD BOY/HEAD GIRL TOMIONE! WITH A SHARED COMMON ROOM! SHENANIGANS! (also maybe some shower boning in the shared bathroom but whatever i'm not picky)”_
> 
>  
> 
> There is a shared common room. And a genderswap head boy/head girl AU. Tom is Tamsin and Hermione is Leontes because of Shakespeare reasons and I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE.
> 
> This is surprisingly less crack-y than I am intimating, though.
> 
> Kind of.
> 
> Also, I am so incredibly sorry but there is no “shower boning” because I am 5’11” and have literally never had enjoyable shower sex, so. There is only a vague allusion to any sex at all, and that is primarily because I CANNOT WRITE PORN WITHOUT PLOT OR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OR EMOTIONS AND THAT IS REALLY HARD TO DO WITH LESS THAN 1500 WORDS.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> xoxo

* * *

 

**_(before)_ **

Tamsin Riddle had never understood Leontes Granger.

She recalled the day they had first met, as eleven year-olds on the Hogwarts Express, with equal parts frustration and fascination—Granger had already been in uniform, all neatly pressed black trousers, polished brown loafers, and a crisp white linen shirt buttoned up to his collar; his hair had been in dire need of a good trim, thick, sandy brown strands curling messily around the back of his neck, and his face had been slightly pudgy, cheeks rosy and chin round, overlarge front teeth on display as he’d expounded, at length, upon the myriad mundane details of Hogwarts’ medieval architecture.

He’d grown up since then, obviously—Tamsin hardly needed that absolute _slag_ Cora McLaggen to point it out to her—but he had made his opinion of Tamsin perfectly clear in that narrow, dimly-lit train corridor all those years ago.

He did not like her.

He was destined to fall into an easy, effortless friendship with Harriet Potter and Ramona Weasley; Gryffindors, all of them, brash and bland and obnoxiously brave. He should have been forgettable—he was too studious, too sanctimonious, too focused on injecting muggle morality into a world that didn’t have room for it—but he was clever, too, vindictive and spiteful in a way that made Tamsin smile, begrudgingly—

She had been _impressed_ when she’d come across Maximillian Edgecombe in the Transfiguration courtyard in their fifth year and seen infallible proof of Granger’s wrath— _SNEAK_ spelled out in angry purple pustules, right across Edgecombe’s forehead, seemingly permanent and almost certain to scar. Tamsin had released a wholly undignified snort of laughter, helpless and harried, before realizing that Granger was so much more than brilliant and boring—he should have been _hers_ , should have been her equal, her _companion_ , if only he had not been a muggle-born.

Because that was the crux of their animosity.

“I’ll be in Slytherin, of course,” she had said to him, chin held high. Her wand had been clutched in her hand—still new, still a _novelty_ , even though she had been sure that she could already do more magic with it than all the rest of her classmates combined.

“Why would you want to be sorted _there_?” Granger had asked, nonplussed and wary. “That house is famous for producing a disproportionate number of Dark wizards, and that’s not even counting the fact that it’s rumored to perpetuate dangerous political ideology surrounding the admittedly murky standards of blood purity—”

“Oh, are you not a pureblood?” she had sneered. “Pity. I don’t associate with _mudbloods_. Good luck with everything—I imagine you’ll need it, considering.”

She had planned to align herself with wealthy, influential purebloods, gene pools rich with magic and history; she had assumed that the most efficient path out of the travesty, no, the _tragedy_ that had been her childhood would be on the coattails of the Malfoys and the Blacks and the Parkinsons—she wanted control, she wanted power, she wanted the assurance that she would never again be left at the mercy of someone else’s poor decisions, would never again be an abomination, an afterthought, abandoned and alone.

And so she had antagonized Leontes Granger.

She had mocked him in Potions, bested him at Charms, taunted his friends and made her disdain for his parentage agonizingly clear; in response, he had brewed a wildly successful Polyjuice potion in their second year, used an embarrassingly persistent _Wingardium Leviosa_ on the hem of her dress at the Yule Ball, and turned Darcy Malfoy into powder white ferret in the middle of the Great Hall.

Meanwhile, they were both announced as prefects in fifth year.

They each received eleven O.W.L.’s the summer after sixth year.

And then, in seventh year, Tamsin became head girl and Granger became head boy—and Dumbledore cheerfully informed them that they would be partaking in a unique social experiment at the behest of the Department of Mysteries to determine whether or not scholastic productivity was affected by opposite-gender cohabitation—

They would be sharing a bathroom, a common room, a dormitory, even—

They would be _living together_ **.**

###

**_(during)_ **

“Could you possibly wear something else to sleep in?” Granger demands, deep voice sharp with irritation. “It’s mid-November in _Scotland_ , for God’s sake, a _miniscule_ silk slip doesn’t really qualify as _appropriate nightwear_.”

Tamsin rubs the emerald green lace of her camisole between her fingers; the neckline is daringly low, paper-thin fabric molding to the curve of her breasts like a second skin, nipples pebbled and perched high in the frigid cold air.

“It’s comfortable,” she lies, settling back into the nest of pillows she has artfully arranged across her duvet.

“It’s _distracting_ ,” he bites out. “Do you think I don’t know what it is you’re doing? Or— _trying_ to do, I suppose, since it’s not as if I’m falling for it.”

She smirks.

“Awfully full of yourself, aren’t you?”

He swings his legs over the side of his bed and lets out an impatient sigh.

“Look,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re attractive. I know that. Everyone bloody knows that. If this is a proximity thing—”

“It isn’t,” she interrupts smoothly.

He grits his teeth, broad shoulders hunched over in exasperation.

“If you’re plotting something nefarious—”

“I’m not,” she says, tone innocent.

“—operating under the delusion that you can _manipulate_ me—” he continues loudly.

“I _could_ ,” she allows, “but that isn’t what I’m doing.”

He folds his arms over his chest; she examines the lean, sculpted lines of his abdominal muscles with an appreciative hum.

“What is this about?” he asks.

She daintily crosses her ankles.

“I want to date you,” she answers, cocking her head to the side.

He blinks.

“But you don’t like me,” he says blankly.

“Erroneous,” she chirps.

“I don’t like you,” he tries.

“Believe me, we can fix that,” she drawls, smirking.

He frowns.

“You’re not a good person,” he says mulishly.

“Did you happen to hear that Darius Umbridge came out of his coma at St. Mungo’s?” she asks, sweetly conversational. “Apparently the centaurs didn’t maul him to _death_ , but they did badly damage a large portion of his spinal cord—”

His lips twitch.

She feels _victorious_.

“I’m a muggle-born,” he eventually says, shrugging. “Isn’t that a bit of a deal-breaker for you and your…ah, _minions_?”

“They’re not _minions_ ,” she retorts—but then pauses and quickly adds, “At least not yet.”

He arches a brow.

“Darcy Malfoy attempted to give you an uncharted Caribbean island for your sixteenth birthday,” he reminds her. “She suggested you use it to build a maximum security compound for mudbloods.”

“Hearsay,” Tamsin simpers, waving her hand.

“It was written on the card,” he says flatly. “Which Patrick Parkinson stapled to the door of the Great Hall. Literally _everyone_ saw.”

She leans forward, placing her hands on his knees. He doesn’t move away.

“You’re not saying no,” she murmurs, meeting his eyes—shuttered and suspicious and so beautifully, monochromatically brown—layers of amber and cognac, glittering gold and fire-roasted espresso—

He licks his lips.

“I’m not saying no,” he agrees, dragging his fingers along the gentle swell of her hips.

###

**_(after)_ **

The break up three times before graduation—one screaming match in the library after Gryffindor wins the Quidditch cup; one jealous, incendiary rage after Cora McLaggen is seen dropping into Leontes’s lap on Easter Sunday; and one quiet, serious argument inside the Chamber of Secrets, voices low and expressions tight, when she refuses on principle to attend a muggle university with him.

It’s the last that results in their first night apart, Leontes lying wide awake on the crimson velvet couch in the common room, gaze trained on the gold and silver embossed ceiling—sinuous, poisonous serpents entwined with roaring lions, graceful and gorgeous, two predators at a standstill, a compromise—

“London,” he tells her, barreling into the bedroom. “I’ll go somewhere in London, and you can go take over the Ministry like you—”

She sits up immediately, wiping at her cheeks, and he stops, stares, swallows.

“What?” she asks, clearing her throat.

He opens his mouth, studies the dull sheen of drying, leftover tears on her face—he has never seen her cry, not properly, and he is suddenly uncertain about how he should approach this. He is aware that she equates emotional vulnerability with weakness—she is guarded and she is careful and she knows precisely how to use the stereotypes of her sex as tools, as _weapons_ —but this is none of those things.

“Quit the histrionics, Tamsin,” he manages to snap, unable to entirely keep the softness out of his features. “I have a solution to our problem.”

Her lips turn down at the corners, her forehead crumpling in a poorly hidden flinch—and he thinks he might have read the situation wrong, thinks he might have finally failed her—

Until she sniffs and folds back the sheets on his side of the bed.

“Excellent,” she replies tartly. “I’ve invested far too much energy into this relationship to let it flounder due to your inability to support my dreams—”

He listens to her talk, kisses the dip between her shoulder blades, and smiles.

###


End file.
